Lab 1
Abstract
Many factors, including the brain, peers, teacher enthusiasm, rewards, the classroom environment, and parent involvement, affect student motivation and behavior. However, for adolescent students undergoing increased plasticity, the brain affects much of their independence and anatomy in the learning process. To enhance adolescent students’ motivation in the learning process, this project highlights brain-based learning procedures to guide teachers in utilizing the brain component to enhance students’ performance. The project’s primary goal is to create brain-based learning awareness in my school and increase brain-based learning among students. Steps to incorporating brain-based learning and ways of calming the teen mind in the classroom are discussed. The functioning of the teen brain, today’s classroom stressors, symptoms of stress in class, and action plans for teachers and parents have also been analyzed. Finally, this conducts an empirical analysis to determine the interaction between brain-based learning and anxiety on examination scores.
Methods: The uses questionnaires measure anxiety level among learners and employs regression analysis, two-way ANOVA analysis, and Chi-Square test to determine relationships between variables.
Results: Regression coefficients (-7.3 Non-brain-based trained, -16.9 Anxiety)
ANOVA (P values < 0.001 for both brain-based training and anxiety)
Chi Square (P< .001)
Conclusion: Anxiety negatively affects students’ examination scores, while brain-based learning increases students’ examination scores. The two independent variables do not, however, interact. There is a significant difference between the impact of brain-based learning and anxiety on examination scores. Brain-based learning should be introduced to the entire school officially to enhance students’ performance.
Introduction
Learning plays a significant role in brain development in teens that entails enhancing memory, cognitive skills, and emotion- control skills that enable them to tackle challenging examinations that need greater mental attention (Sercombe, 2014). Therefore, the brain is a powerful tool in learning, and teachers must ensure that the student’s mind undergoes proper changes in functional and physical structure as learning continues. This project targets fellow students and the teaching staff in my institution. The school’s teachers’ committee has already received this project’s proposal and has been appraised.
Aims of this Project
- Increase brain-based learning skills among students in my school by creating awareness of the importance of brain-based learning among teachers.
- Explain how brain-based learning can be employed in the classroom.
- Highlight challenges to maintaining a brain-friendly teaching and a brain-friendly classroom environment.
- Devise an implementation plan for brain-based learning in my school.
- Device methods of data collection and evaluation of the project.
- Conduct an empirical study on the impact of brain-based learning and anxiety on examination scores.
Research Questions
The research questions that guide this project include:
- What are the benefits of brain-based learning? How can teachers employ brain-based knowledge in the classroom?
- What is the effect of increased digital connectivity on the mental well-being of students?
- What are the major mental health addictions and issues facing adolescent students?
- What remedies have been brought forth to eradicate mental health disorders among teen learners?
- What are the impacts of brain-based learning and anxiety on examination scores?
Literature review
Importance of Brain-based Learning
Metacognition in Brain-based learning: Metacognition refers to the act of thinking about how we think, which can help students question how they learn rather than just what they learn. Teaching students how the brain functions like axons, dendrites, and neurons can enhance their metacognition skills (Jensen, 2014: Lynch, 2018). Metacognition enables students to take full responsibility for their brain’s growth, which increases brains’ capacity, making remembrance successful.
The Child’s Social Brain: The social brain has been identified as a powerful tool for learning. Students whose teachers have employed social interaction in the classroom become more successful in tackling class tests. Students can learn better from one another, just as babies learn better from other people. Despite how precise machine learning can be, the size of its information and impact is much less than that of social integration (Lynch, 2018). Exchange of gestures and facial expressions is made easier in social integration, creating a difference in the social context. Ways of incorporating social integration in the classroom include allowing free movement in the class, organizing the classroom in tables or circles, and letting students work in small groups or pairs.
Independence and Anatomy: Compared to traditional instruction, brain-based learning enhances more independence and anatomy among students. Thus, students can self-evaluate their work, manage and plan time resources, construct attainable learning objectives, work with peers, question reflectively, and take responsibility for staying on course and purposeful. Nevertheless, not all learners gain the skills of independence and anatomy. Learners rarely develop self-motivation skills without the help of teachers. Students who use memorization as a technique never recall most of the information obtained after some time (Lynch, 2018). Teachers should, therefore, use brain-based learning that creates understanding and makes students independent.
The Impact of Sleep, Food, and Stress on Adolescent Students
Food, sleep, and stress have huge impacts on adolescent learners’ performance. Teens are usually attracted to advertisements linked to sugary cereal, fast foods, and sweet drinks. High sugar consumption reduces the amounts of BDNF growth hormones, which causes mental health disorders such as schizophrenia and depression in adolescent students. Sleep is crucial in attaining optimal brain function. A deficiency of sleep may cause various adverse effects on teenage students, including poor grades, low concentration, anxiety, and depression. Many teens have their sleep time so much compressed, something that disrupts their natural rhythm, robbing them of some of the most productive periods of sleep of a lifetime. As observed, most teenagers are victims of stress (Simuforosa, 2013). This can be linked to peer pressure, the pressure to fit in and be accepted, and academic pressure. Stress can cause adolescent students to engage in risky activities.
Today’s Classroom Stressors: Digital Connectivity, Drugs, and Alcohol
Because of rapid technological evolution, students have developed a tendency to retire to bed very late, preventing them from getting enough sleep needed for optimal brain functioning (Staff Writers, 2019). Technology shortens students’ attention and affects their short-term memories, causing forgetfulness due to excess screen time. Students have lost social skills due to too much digital immersion (Lynch, 2018a). Technology use, such as social media interaction, can expose students to dangerous and harmful cyber activities such as cyberbullying that causes stress among learners. Drug abuse and alcohol interfere with the brain’s effective functioning and have become the main stressors in the classroom today. Drugs cause memory loss, making brain-based learning almost impossible for addicted learners (Nash, 2018). In most cases, educators lack the skills to deal with drug addictions, forcing such situations to be handled outside the classroom.
How to Create a Brain-friendly Classroom Environment
This refers to brain-compatible environments created by the educators’ actions, such as greeting learners at the beginning of a class or showing excitement about the process and content of learning (Education World, 2020). Unless teachers create a brain-friendly classroom environment, brain-based learning could be unattainable. To attain a sustainable brain-friendly classroom, teachers should employ many rituals and procedures in lessons to free up the working memory and calm the student’s brain. Promoting a sense of community through flexible grouping allows students’ minds to work together in a better way. Educators should ensure that the curriculum in place is meaningful and relates to the learners’ lives, making learning memorable. Because some students slow and need more time than others to access information, educators should provide enough time on task and wait time. An attractive and peaceful environment that contains colorful posters, good natural lighting, or plants can produce a regulated climate with the best brain-functioning temperatures of between sixty-eight and seventy-two degrees. Also, keeping the stress and threats low in the classroom can help the brain function at higher levels.
Calming the Teenage Mind in the Classroom
For educators to calm and manage teenage minds in the classroom, they must understand how the teen brain functions, the impact of sleep, stress, and food on teenagers, and know today’s significant causes of tension (Wallace, 2016). Teachers ought to identify symptoms of stress among students and take appropriate measures to stabilize any abnormal situations. Teachers play the most significant role in reducing stress in adolescent students, mostly because they spend most of their time in the classroom with educators. Positive words and expressions and creating a relaxing classroom environment can go a long way in reducing student stress.
Symptoms of Stress among Students
Symptoms that may indicate stress among students include stomach upset and headache complaints, light pains, aches, fidgeting, anxiety or worrying, nightmares, bedwetting, and loss of appetite (Staff Writers, 2019). Failure to attend school, difficulty sleeping, crying often, physical aggression, and nail-biting also indicate stress. Teachers and parents should focus on these signs, which are vital to calming the teenage brain.
Because the prefrontal cortex (a system that helps individuals make safety decisions) among adolescents is underdeveloped, they make rational decisions when charged emotionally (Lynch, 2018; Sherman, 2019). It seems like students across levels and ages sometimes do not consider the consequences of their actions or even think through them before deciding. Thus, students find themselves in problems such as injury, mental disorders, substance abuse, or infectious diseases. Continuous learning changes both the physical and the functional structure of the brain (Freudenrich & Boyd, 2001). Every time the student learns new ideas, new neurons and connections are made in mind, making the existing ones stronger.
Hypothesis
Brain-based training among learners increases their performance, that is, increases their examination scores.
Anxiety among learners lowers their performance. The higher the level of anxiety, the lower the examination scores.
Methods
Design and overview
This study analyzed the impact of brain-based learning and anxiety levels on the examination scores of students. The program was first applied in a few classes and later in the entire school if it would sound viable after evaluation. Teachers employed lessons on how to learn besides the regular curriculum and taught learners how to apply brain-based concepts in the learning process in the selected sample study classes. Some classes were intentionally left out to act as experiment controls. Implementation took a full academic term where brain-based learning was taught throughout the term. An empirical test was done after learners took their end-term examinations.
Participants
The study used 100 students that were evenly sampled from classes that underwent brain-based learning and classes that did not undergo the brain-based learning. In the quantitative analyses conducted, a dummy variable, “0,” was introduced to represent students who did not get brain-based training, whereas “1” stood for students who were taught brain-based lessons.
Materials
End-term mean examination scores of the study participants were taken for the empirical research and used as the independent variable. The study also used anxiety diagnosis data of the 100 participants. Questionnaires were used to conduct the anxiety levels of participants using the Zung Self-Rating Anxiety Scale.
Procedure
The first step was conducting anxiety tests where learners were asked to rate their anxiety from ‘a little of the time’ to ‘most of the time’ on 20 different variables, including shaking, nervousness, nightmares, fainting, rapid heartbeat, and frequent urination. The ratings were then converted to either low anxiety (0), medium anxiety (1), or high anxiety (2). The examination scores, brain-based data, and anxiety levels are tested using regression analysis, two-way ANOVA analysis, and Chi Squire to determine the relationships between the independent and dependent variables.
Analysis and Interpretation
Regression analysis
| Model Summary | ||||||||||||||||
| Model | R | R² | Adjusted R² | RMSE | ||||||||||||
| 1 | 0.845 | 0.713 | 0.707 | 8.127 | ||||||||||||
| ANOVA | ||||||||||||||||
| Model | Sum of Squares | df | Mean Square | F | p | |||||||||||
| 1 | Regression | 15941 | 2 | 7970.30 | 120.7 | < .001 | ||||||||||
| Residual | 6406 | 97 | 66.04 | |||||||||||||
| Total | 22347 | 99 | ||||||||||||||
| Coefficients | |||||||||||||
| Model | Unstandardized | Standard Error | Standardized | t | p | ||||||||
| 1 | (Intercept) | 77.845 | 1.884 | 41.322 | < .001 | ||||||||
| Brain-based training | -7.399 | 1.822 | -0.247 | -4.060 | < .001 | ||||||||
| Anxiety Level | -16.944 | 1.114 | -0.927 | -15.211 | < .001 | ||||||||
Both brain-based learning and anxiety levels significantly affect the examination scores of learners. The impact of not training learners on brain-based skills lowers examination scores by seven percent, whereas the reverse is true. Anxiety also lowers examination scores by 16.9 percent.
Two-way ANOVA
| ANOVA – Exam Scores | |||||||||||
| Cases | Sum of Squares | df | Mean Square | F | p | ||||||
| Brain-based training | 828.6 | 1 | 828.63 | 12.650 | < .001 | ||||||
| Anxiety Level | 12445.6 | 2 | 6222.81 | 95.000 | < .001 | ||||||
| Brain-based training ✻ Anxiety Level | 154.1 | 2 | 77.03 | 1.176 | 0.313 | ||||||
| Residual | 6157.3 | 94 | 65.50 | ||||||||
| Note. Type III Sum of Squares | |||||||||||
Brain-based learning and anxiety level impact students’ examination scores significantly. However, the two variables do not interact to affect the dependent variables.
Chi-square
| Contingency Tables | ||||||||||||||||||
| Anxiety Level | ||||||||||||||||||
| Brain-based training | 2 | 1 | 0 | Total | ||||||||||||||
| 0 | Count | 26.00 | 15.00 | 9.00 | 50.00 | |||||||||||||
| % within row | 52.0 % | 30.0 % | 18.0 % | 100.0 % | ||||||||||||||
| 1 | Count | 6.00 | 18.00 | 26.00 | 50.00 | |||||||||||||
| % within row | 12.0 % | 36.0 % | 52.0 % | 100.0 % | ||||||||||||||
| Total | Count | 32.00 | 33.00 | 35.00 | 100.00 | |||||||||||||
| % within row | 32.0 % | 33.0 % | 35.0 % | 100.0 % | ||||||||||||||
| Chi-Squared Tests | ||||||||||||||||||
| Value | df | p | ||||||||||||||||
| Χ² | 21.03 | 2 | < .001 | |||||||||||||||
| N | 100 | |||||||||||||||||
| Nominal | |||
| Value | |||
| Contingency coefficient | 0.417 | ||
There is a difference in impact level between brain-based learning and anxiety level on the examination scores. The difference is also statistically significant.
Discussion
This project has analyzed the ways teachers can use in adopting brain-based learning in the classroom and ways in which learners can maintain a brain-friendly environment. The importance of brain-based concepts has been listed, including metacognition, the social brain, independence, and anatomy. Ways in which the adolescent student mind can be calmed are discussed, including understanding the impact of sleep, food, and stress on students, the functioning of the teen brain, identifying today’s main classroom stressors, and analyzing parents’ role and teachers in minimizing stress among learners. The project highlights its methods of implementation, data collection, and evaluation.
The regression analysis has also revealed the magnitude of the independent variables’ effect on the independent variable. A two-way ANOVA analysis confirms a statistically significant effect of both independent variables on the dependent variable. However, there is no interaction between the two independent variables on the dependent variable. A Chi-Square test also confirms a significant difference in the impact of brain-based training and anxiety level on the students’ examination scores.
Appendices
Appendix I
Post Hoc Tests
| Post Hoc Comparisons – Anxiety Level | |||||||||||
| Mean Difference | SE | t | p tukey | ||||||||
| 0 | 1 | 19.09 | 2.110 | 9.050 | < .001 | ||||||
| 2 | 32.47 | 2.410 | 13.471 | < .001 | |||||||
| 1 | 2 | 13.37 | 2.315 | 5.776 | < .001 | ||||||
| Descriptives – Exam Scores | |||||||||
| Brain-based training | Anxiety Level | Mean | SD | N | |||||
| 0 | 0 | 79.11 | 5.278 | 9 | |||||
| 1 | 60.53 | 6.906 | 15 | ||||||
| 2 | 43.73 | 8.647 | 26 | ||||||
| 1 | 0 | 70.88 | 10.693 | 26 | |||||
| 1 | 51.28 | 5.432 | 18 | ||||||
| 2 | 41.33 | 2.733 | 6 | ||||||
Appendix II
Marginal Means
| Marginal Means – Brain-based training | |||||||||
| Brain-based training | Marginal Mean | SE | Lower CI | Upper CI | |||||
| 0 | 61.13 | 1.255 | 58.63 | 63.62 | |||||
| 1 | 54.50 | 1.377 | 51.76 | 57.23 | |||||
| Marginal Means – Anxiety Level | |||||||||
| Anxiety Level | Marginal Mean | SE | Lower CI | Upper CI | |||||
| 0 | 75.00 | 1.565 | 71.89 | 78.11 | |||||
| 1 | 55.91 | 1.415 | 53.10 | 58.71 | |||||
| 2 | 42.53 | 1.833 | 38.89 | 46.17 | |||||
| Marginal Means – Brain-based training ✻ Anxiety Level | |||||||||||
| Brain-based training | Anxiety Level | Marginal Mean | SE | Lower CI | Upper CI | ||||||
| 0 | 0 | 79.11 | 2.698 | 73.75 | 84.47 | ||||||
| 1 | 60.53 | 2.090 | 56.38 | 64.68 | |||||||
| 2 | 43.73 | 1.587 | 40.58 | 46.88 | |||||||
| 1 | 0 | 70.88 | 1.587 | 67.73 | 74.04 | ||||||
| 1 | 51.28 | 1.908 | 47.49 | 55.07 | |||||||
| 2 | 41.33 | 3.304 | 34.77 | 47.89 | |||||||
Appendix III
Descriptives Plot
Descriptives Plot
References
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Sherman, C. (2019). A Delicate Balance: Risks, Rewards, and the Adolescent Brain. Dana Foundation. https://www.dana.org/article/a-delicate-balance-risks-rewards-and-the-adolescent-brain/
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Staff Writers. (2019, March 13). Stress Management in School: Tips for Parents, Teachers, & Students. AccreditedSchoolsOnline.Org; AccreditedSchoolsOnline.org. https://www.accreditedschoolsonline.org/resources/student-stress/
Wallace, K. (2016). Calming the teenage mind in the classroom. CNN. Retrieved from: https://edition.cnn.com/2016/02/08/health/mindfulness-teenagers-schools-stress/index.html